


song

by violetinfidel



Series: drabbles [1]
Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Four Swords
Genre: in which green goes through religious rites of passage, so he can be formally accepted into his mother's religion
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-05-29
Updated: 2018-05-29
Packaged: 2019-05-15 04:16:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,184
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14783447
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/violetinfidel/pseuds/violetinfidel





	song

He’s nervous. 

(As if that’s anything new.)

But he has reason to be, this time, a very good reason in fact: he’s slowly, arduously, making his way through his devotional trials, and it feels like the entire population of Gerudo Town is watching him, probably because the entire population of Gerudo Town is watching him. His mother’s somewhere out there in the crowd, and that should make him feel better but somehow it just makes him more anxious. He doesn’t want to let her down, and he has this nagging feeling he will anyway.

Getting a sand seal was already hell- they might be big and lumbering and clumsy on the surface, but at the first sign of danger they’d dive beneath the sand where their movement was smooth as silk and burrow like the Calamity was after them. 

“It’s easy,” The master of ceremonies had told him as she’d handed him the ritual shield and spear and bow. “Don’t you worry.”

_Easy_ , he’d thought, bitterly, after his seventh time falling on his ass trying to hitch one to the rope.

He’d gotten it eventually, to cheering and certainly to impatient relief, and had set upon navigating the difficult route he had to follow. He was allowed a map of it to study, for weeks before he’d had to embark on this, but the problem with that was that he’d never been particularly good with maps. And it wasn’t a short route, either, and not even a straight line; it was long and winding and, he was pretty sure, crossed over the same point multiple times.

By the time he was done he wanted to saw his own arms off for how much they ached, having to keep such a firm hold on those ropes, but the ordeal was far from over, and painstakingly he kept himself upright and in possession of his arms as the master of ceremonies met him at the route’s endpoint.

“Green,” She says, sounding as though this isn’t the first time she’s said it, and it snaps him out of his thoughts and into reality.

Absently he rubs at his arm, tries to get the soreness out of it before the next trial. “Yeah?”

“We must be going,” She tells him, and prods him gently on the back. “We cannot be delaying. They sleep at night, and if they sleep then you will be redoing this all tomorrow.”

They walk to the site of the final trial, which is both a blessing and a curse- his arms are burning, but his feet drag through the sand, and by the time the place is in sight he thinks he might just save himself some trouble and cut all his limbs off.

He says so, and the master of ceremonies laughs. “You are nearly done, little voe. You have made it this far. We have faith in you.”

As they approach, he can hear an odd sound, carried by the breeze, and as they get closer he realizes they’re singing, the ritual chant of the final trial. The first of the spectators notices, the one they’ve dubbed the ceremony’s Summoner, and she calls out to the circle of women that loosely envelop the trial grounds, and the song rises in tempo and in pitch, and they begin to beat the butts of their spears against the dunes.

His heartbeat picks up, almost as if to match the pace of the song, and his hands start to tremble as he passes through the opening they leave for him in their ring. There are a few friendly hands on his shoulders as he walks through, and then the gap behind him closes and he’s alone, shuffling towards the middle of their semicircle, waiting.

The Summoner shouts; the onlookers mimic her, and beat the sand with a little more fervor. The song starts to sound frenzied, fast and strewn with odd pitches and inflections, and he’d wonder at the words to the chant if he weren’t too preoccupied to decipher them.

And he feels it, now- a distant rumble in the ground, a deep powerful thrum under his feet, and he knows it’s time.

And he has no idea how to do this.

He has a spear, and he has a shield, and he has a bow with one single shock arrow. That’s all he gets to kill this molduga. He’s never even seen a live molduga before, let alone fight one, and he’s terrified. But there are people watching, dozens and dozens of them, and he’s not one to disappoint.

So he tries to steady his hands as he waits, as he watches the plume of dust billowing from the molduga’s burrowing grow ever closer, and he tries to plan.

As the molduga gets closer, the onlookers ease off with their spears, and they back away to give him space, but their song never ceases, and even far away the tune carries loud and clear in his mind, though the words fall on deaf ears.

It’s almost instinctual. 

Where he gets it from he’ll never know, but when the molduga is within range of his bow and gaining fast, on impulse he unhooks his shield from its holds on his back and throws it as far and as hard as he can.

It thumps against a dune yards away, to his left, and the molduga angles itself to follow it, and he’s in a mad rush to string his lone arrow as it poises to breach.

When it does it’s majestic, even for something as hideous as a molduga, and he’s so mesmerized by the sight he nearly misses his chance. The shower of sand hitting his face snaps him right out of it, though, and he takes careful aim and looses his one arrow, and with it all of his hopes of ever passing the trial.

Shaky as his hands are, it’s a wonder it hits its mark at all, but not only does it hit its mark it hits it beautifully; the shock arrow’s prongs bury deep into the fatty flesh behind the molduga’s eye, and the electricity it harbors goes coursing through the monster’s brain. 

It crashes to the sand, paralyzed (for now), and he knows that this is his only chance- if he lets it recover, if he lets it go now, he has no hopes of ever killing it.

So he sprints over the dunes as fast as his aching legs will carry him, slides the spear from its straps and climbs the molduga’s side, poises the blade over its eye and drives it in. He leans his entire body weight into it, and doesn’t stop until he hears the  _crack_  of the bone and then feels its brain give, and it goes slack beneath him.

Half of the onlookers are cheering for him, and the other half are still carrying the battle hymn, but it’s eased from its panicked battle tempo to a softer lulling rhythm, a haunting melody, and for weeks to come he can’t shake it from his thoughts no matter how hard he tries.


End file.
